Chicago's violence took my dad, friends
updated 12:22 PM EST, Fri February 15, 2013
Tenisha Bell's mother and father Velma and Ezekiel Taylor. Bell's father was shot and killed in Chicago when she was 5.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- President Obama's visit to Chicago brings attention to city's extreme gun violence
- Tenisha Bell grew up on South Side; her dad and two friends were shot and killed there
- Bell worked hard at school, fled Chicago and will never live in her hometown again
- Bell credits her mom for her success; says kids need education, mentors, jobs
Editor's note: Tenisha Bell is an executive producer at CNN and president of the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists.
(CNN) -- President Obama is visiting my hometown of Chicago -- the city I hate to love.
The president's visit
focuses attention on gun violence, and comes soon after the funeral of
Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old who was shot down in Chicago after
participating in the president's inauguration festivities.
I know way too much about urban gun violence; three people I love were shot and killed, like Hadiya, on Chicago's streets.
Tenisha Taylor Bell
I grew up on the South
Side in the late '70s and early 80s. I was very young, but I recall the
evening of my dad's death vividly. We had a green phone mounted on our
kitchen wall. One night as my mom and I were sleeping in her bed, the
phone rang. My mom awoke and went to the kitchen to answer.
She leaned against the
wall, that green phone in her hand, with a look of despair and horror as
her sister-in-law told her the news.
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The Chicago police then
banged on the door, saying, "We just found your husband dead." At that
moment our lives changed. Chicago's ruthless streets had stolen my
father. Ezekiel Taylor was shot and killed in a robbery, on his way home
from church. He died four minutes away from the house where Michelle
Obama grew up.
And so my mother, Velma,
was left to raise me in a single parent household. Without her husband's
income, she struggled to keep me in private school and extra curricular
activities -- from ballet, to tap, to flute lessons, to drum lessons.
Her sacrifice can never be repaid. She taught me how to be a survivor,
and imparted strong values, standards and morals.
She also taught me the
lesson of forgiveness. I forgive the two men and woman who killed my
father because you can't go forward if you don't.
In high school, my great
friend and honorary "big brother" died in the same street violence. Ron
Hollister was intelligent, upstanding, funny and a good student . He was
gunned down in a robbery on a summer day when he was home from his
freshman year at college. He had gone to get his car washed.
Chicago's gun violence: Can Obama help?
Chicago's 500th homicide this year
National politics cloud teen's funeral
Pendletons: Hadiya was bubbly, funny
As a senior in high
school, I vowed to get out of Chicago, to escape the pain and tragedy. I
worked hard and landed a full four year scholarship to Clark Atlanta
University. I never looked back.
But in March of 2010,
Chicago reached me in Atlanta with another horrifying phone call. My
grade school buddy Steven Lee -- kind, funny and generous -- was leaving
his birthday party and was caught in the crossfire of two gangs. Steven
was killed by a stray bullet and his killer was never captured. To add
to the tragedy for his family, his older brother was a Chicago police
officer who was killed in the line of duty in August 2001.
My hometown is a war zone. Too many innocent children and young adults have died. Chicago police reported that 506 people were murdered in the city in 2012, about 16% more than 2011. Compare that with the fact that 310 American troops were killed in Afghanistan in 2012.
Chicagoans can be proud
and hopeful that our president is going to the city to bring attention
to this epidemic of violence. Too many mothers, fathers, sisters and
brothers of murder victims have been suffering for too long.
Leaders like Chicago
Police Commissioner Garry McCarthy and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel need
to figure out why murder rates in cities like New York and Los Angeles
are plummeting while Chicago's continues to soar.
And parents, religious leaders, teachers and community organizers also need to help take back the streets.
The city needs an action
plan to save innocent people from becoming victims like Ronnie, Steven
and Hadiya. It needs more community centers to offer a safe haven and
alternative to gang banging for kids. Young people need direction and
mentors -- people like my mother, who instilled in me the values you
need to rise above the challenges of poverty and despair.
I love Chicago because
it made me who I am. It has the best pizza, a great skyline, gorgeous
Lake Michigan, museums and a diversity of cultures on every corner.
Obama called it home. It gave us Oprah, Michael Jordan, Nobel Prize
winning author Saul Bellow -- and the great University of Chicago. It
gave us Michelle Obama, who was also raised on the South Side.
But it's the city I hate
to love, and I won't go back -- especially now that I'm raising a son. I
don't want to lose him to the streets of Chicago.
I hope President Obama's
visit will inspire the city to save itself, so young people in the
future will feel they can live and raise a family in the city they love.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Tenisha Bell.
